The purpose of this study was to identify ways Indigenous theoretical perspectives may guide current and future substance abuse prevention programs. As the majority of current theories guiding substance abuse prevention programs in American Indian and Alaska Native communities stem from Western ideologies and lack Indigenous perspectives, there is a paucity of research on theoretical underpinnings for Indigenous perspectives in AI/AN communities and their potential role in substance abuse prevention programming. It is well known that when programs are theoretically connected to the communities in which they are implemented, they are more likely to be accepted, accurately measured, and sustained for longer periods of time. Using a multi-method approach, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted, followed by a content analysis of interviewee publications, and member check interviews to validate findings. Participants were asked about their perceptions on the role of theory in substance abuse prevention in American Indian and Alaska Native communities; with a focus on what Indigenous perspectives would look like in current and future programming. Results provided evidence of a complex, yet essential, topic area in which additional future studies are necessary. Identification of missing or lacking cultural elements and future recommendations are provided. Implications from the current study show the need for integration of Indigenous perspectives into substance abuse prevention programs for American Indian and Alaska Native communities.

This dissertation is a fundamental critique of the Western discourse using an Afrocentric critical reading of major Western constructions of knowledge. As such the study examines both the origins and dehumanizing consequences of the European project of Modernity. The study departs from the thesis that Afrocentricity, a philosophical paradigm conceptually rooted in African cultures and values, brings renewed ethical and social significance to a sustained project of human agency, liberation, and equality. Thus the dissertation explores how each major Western idea is understood within the context of the revolutionary philosophical paradigm and epistemological theory of social change. Concepts like individualism, domination, colonialism, race and ethnicity, universalism, progress and supremacy that Molefi Kete Asante calls the “infrastructures of dominance and privilege” are reviewed against the backdrop of agency, community, commonality, cultural centeredness, and ma’at. Indeed, employing critical ideas from the works of Afrocentrists this study highlights the inadequacy of Westernity in overcoming the various forms of oppression. Modernism, Marxism, Existentialism, Feminism, Post-modernism, and Post-colonialism, are addressed in dialogue with Afrocentricity as an exploratory part of a two-way relationship between theoretical understanding and practice which challenges established and hegemonic approaches to knowledge. In fact, the study argues for a rational approach to conceptual “rupture” that would allow the scholar to navigate the shattered ideologies of Western thought, and to contribute to the exposure of the imperialistic ambitions that worked at the backstage of the political and economic philosophies of Europe since the early fifteen century. In effect, the dissertation can be viewed as an intellectual journey moving from an epistemological location in Western epistemology towards an Afrocentric paradigm and theory of knowledge in the quest to defeat the inhuman. Ultimately, the aim is the search for a more humanistic and ideologically less polluted mind and for a more human humanity. / African American Studies